The capabilities of smart phones, or mobile phones with an advanced mobile operating system, are increasingly being tapped by merchants to sell their goods or services or both. Smart phones (or hereafter referred to as “mobile terminals”) are useful to merchants because such mobile terminals are able to host applications (“mobile applications”) that allow for electronic payment of goods and/or services, through the use of digital wallet technology; as well as being able to support value added services, which include coupon or offers and loyalty programs. Examples of a coupon or offer is a ticket or document that can be exchanged for a financial discount or rebate when purchasing a product and/or service while a loyalty program are structured marketing efforts that reward, and therefore encourage, loyal buying behaviour from the same merchant.
While mobile applications are able to facilitate a more frictionless shopping experience, by for example replacing the traditional method of carrying a credit card to make the purchase, a separate loyalty card to keep track of points earned from a purchase or physical vouchers to redeem discounts on a purchase, one problem with their adoption is their compatibility with merchant in-store systems. Each mobile application may use a standard that is compatible with a particular merchant, but may not be compatible with that used by another merchant. Even mobile applications that are designed for communication with the same merchant may not use the same standard.
There is also an inherent difficulty faced by small to medium enterprises and small merchants, in that provision of value added services often requires significant upfront capital outlay, for infrastructure purchase and account creation, to electronically implement and manage value added services.
There is thus a need to implement standards and solutions that enable more merchants to accept in-store transactions (both digital payment and value added service redemption) performed by mobile applications by establishing an open-loop modularized architecture, and/or to provide access for more merchants to the services of premium value added services providers.